{"id":44803,"date":"2025-07-07T01:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T01:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/44803\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T01:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T01:49:10","slug":"on-this-day-in-1973-queen-released-their-unheralded-debut-single-a-brian-may-penned-track-rejected-by-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/44803\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1973, Queen Released Their Unheralded Debut Single\u2014a Brian May-Penned Track Rejected by Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queen wasn\u2019t immediately a success upon their debut. On July 6, 1973, Freddie Mercury<\/a>, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon released Queen\u2019s first-ever single, \u201cKeep Yourself Alive,\u201d in the U.K.<\/p>\n

The song did not chart upon its release and was largely ignored. That held true in both the U.K. and the U.S. upon its release in the latter location. According<\/a> to Queen biographer Mark Hodkinson, \u201c[o]n five separate occasions EMI\u2019s pluggers attempted to secure it space on [Britain\u2019s Radio 1] play list\u201d but were denied each time because the record took \u201ctoo long to happen\u201d.<\/p>\n

The track, which appeared on Queen\u2019s self-titled debut album, is the band\u2019s only single to not chart in the U.K.<\/p>\n

In a 2021 video<\/a>, May, who penned the track, talked about how he got the idea for the song.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t very sure that I was a songwriter, but I just sort of had this idea. Strange enough, the lyrics to \u2018Keep Yourself Alive\u2019 are meant to be kind of a comment. They\u2019re meant to be slightly ironic,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I learned very early on through this song it\u2019s very difficult to be ironic in a song because people take it at face value.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, everyone always did thought \u2018Keep Yourself Alive\u2019 was a jolly song about how great it is to be alive,\u201d May continued, \u201cbut it\u2019s actually more about asking the question, \u2018Is there more to life than this?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Brian May Recalls Recording Queen\u2019s \u201cKeep Yourself Alive\u201d<\/p>\n

The group first recorded the track at De Lane Lea Studios, May told BBC Radio 1<\/a> in 1983. That recording of the track, which was not the version used as the single, \u201chas something which the single never had,\u201d May said.<\/p>\n

Queen was \u201cpressured\u201d to re-record the song and the result, May believed, was \u201cpretty awful.\u201d Years later, the group recorded the track again. The result, May said, was \u201ca bit more true to the original\u201d version. However, May believed that the \u201cmagic of the moment can never be recaptured.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI still think that the De Lane Lea one had that certain sort of magic, so I was never really happy,\u201d he said. \u201cAs it turned out no one else was ever really happy either and we kept remixing it. We thought that it\u2019s the mix that\u2019s wrong. We kept remixing and there must have been, at least, seven or eight different mixes by different groups of people.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cEventually we went in and did a mix with Mike Stone, our engineer, and that\u2019s the one that we were in the end happiest with. That\u2019s the one we put out,\u201d May continued. \u201cBut, to my mind \u2018Keep Yourself Alive\u2019 was never really satisfactory. Never had that magic that it should have had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo by Michael Putland\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queen wasn\u2019t immediately a success upon their debut. On July 6, 1973, Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[34695,171,975,34696,4185,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-44803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-brian-may","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-queen","12":"tag-rock-music","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114809443100163802","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}